Drive-in movie theaters hit with cost of digital age

$200K upgrade can cripple small theaters

TOWN OF WALLKILL — Every evening, as long as at least one car pulls up to the lonely ticket booth off Bloomingburg Road and parks in front of the movie screens at the Fair Oaks Drive-In, Tanner Mege has a job to do.

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By Jessica DiNapoli

recordonline.com

By Jessica DiNapoli

Posted Sep. 1, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Jessica DiNapoli
Posted Sep. 1, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

TOWN OF WALLKILL — Every evening, as long as at least one car pulls up to the lonely ticket booth off Bloomingburg Road and parks in front of the movie screens at the Fair Oaks Drive-In, Tanner Mege has a job to do.

He spools a length of film through his father's projector, then loops it back down onto a spinning metal plate. The movie unwinds like a giant tape deck as people watch from their cars, or a row of folding chairs on the lawn, or, like one family last week, a nest of sleeping bags and blankets tucked into the bed of a pickup truck.

Behind the scenes, this summertime tradition is changing. Distributors are replacing 35mm film with digital hard drives, making the projector and metal plates Mege uses obsolete. Owners of drive-ins and small independent movie theaters have to invest in digital equipment, which can cost more than $200,000, said John Grimaldi of Middletown, who plans to take over the Fair Oaks Drive-In and invest in a digital upgrade.

The expense can financially cripple independent movie houses and family-owned drive-ins like Fair Oaks, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, a trade group. The cost may be too much for some theater owners, and they may just close up, said the group's president, John Vincent, who also owns a drive-in on Cape Cod.

Grimaldi plans to bring Fair Oaks into the digital age, a project that will cost about $200,000.

Tanner Mege, luckily, will still have a job, though his duties will be different. Grimaldi plans to hire Mege as the movie theater manager, a job that will require him to learn about digital projection. He'll continue his other duties at the theater, like working the snack-bar counter.

The digital revolution in movie theaters has been a long time coming — about 10 years, Vincent said. Large multiplexes like Destinta Theatres in New Windsor went digital a couple of years ago.

Other locally owned independent movie houses, like the Downing Film Center in the City of Newburgh and Upstate Films in Rhinebeck and Woodstock, are nonprofits and can turn to their members and supporters for donations to finance the expense.

Beth and Ernie Wilson, who own the three-screen Warwick Drive-In, will spend about $300,000 to convert to digital at the end of the season, when business slows and they have time to work out any kinks.

"We've been researching this a long time, about five years," Beth Wilson said. "It was so new, we figured we would wait, and it is very expensive."

Ernie Wilson, the drive-in's projectionist, will still monitor movies, said Beth Wilson.

"In my opinion, you would always have to have someone there, just in case," Beth Wilson said. "You never know."

At Fair Oaks, Mege's work starts well before the projector gears click on and a movie flickers onto the outdoor screens. Movies arrive on reels — about six reels per feature-length film — that Mege has to splice together.

But, the mechanical system can break down. When Mege was 13, a piece of film lodged in the switch that regulates how fast the metal plates turn. A huge knot formed, and Mege had to untangle it.

"It took 11 hours," Mege said, explaining that two movies spliced together create a five-mile strand of film. Fair Oaks always shows double features, which Mege has to connect together.

Malfunctions like those are unlikely to happen with the new digital setup. Once the new equipment arrives, Mege will simply have to insert the hard drive containing the movie into a computer and press play.

The images projected by the digital equipment are sharper and clearer, but Wilson said that doesn't matter much at drive-ins.

"People who go to the drive-in, they want the experience of it," Wilson said. "This doesn't have a lot to do with it."

The outdoor experience, complete with mosquitoes and the roar of traffic from nearby Route 17, brings Horatio Geminiano of Gardiner and his young family to Fair Oaks every year.

Wednesday night, he backed his pickup truck toward Fair Oaks' smaller movie screen and settled in to watch "2 Guns" and "Kick-Ass 2." He came even though the weather barely held out, because the summer was almost over and he hadn't yet been to the drive-in.

"I've come here 11 years to keep a tradition," he said. "We like to see old movies, how it was a long time ago."